Staff team changes

https://royals.ms/forum/threads/staff-team-changes.180215/

Why I'm 'reopening' the thread
Believe it or not, locking the thread does nothing when you haven't provided closure.

We don't spend hours typing essays up just because we have nothing better to do. We are passionate about the environment in which we meet our friends, strive for our goals and want MapleRoyals to be a game where we can all have fun.

To that end, I will fiercely advocate for what I believe is just and fair, and whilst people might see this as a lost cause - this is what advocacy is to me. We try our best to speak up against what is unjust, and no matter how futile it is, the process itself represents a constant push for change for the better. I'd like to believe everyone in the last 10 pages of this thread who have spoken up have the same ideology - that we are speaking for what we believe is the best for the server.

What Matt has provided so far:
- "Since the anonymous feedback, lessons have been learned, improvements have been made, and stronger boundaries have been set."
- "it is possible for change to occur without advocating for various Staff members to step down"
- "we are making progress in restructuring the workload distribution for Staff members"
- "we will work on better organisation and more responsiveness to feedback and suggestions - including taking quicker action on community feedback where possible"
- "continue to work towards providing a better atmosphere and working environment within staff"
- "We will strive for more transparency between the Staff and the Community. We want to be more open and accepting of reasonable criticisms, and take the vast experience of the players into account"

None of this is tangible, none of this shows true evidence of commitment, and none of this is accountable.

Spending a day dealing with specific character issues while Becca makes a nonchalant appearance in ban appeals does not necessarily mean commitment. It is also unlikely to have a lasting effect because the rapidity in which you've decided to deal with these individual issues means very little planning has taken place in the background. You ask that proper time is given - but are you actually using this time to actually reflect on how the administration is being run as a whole?

You've asked your ex-staff members not to dig into the nitty-gritty details even though you were the one who engaged in the to-and-fro of specific examples - look at how long you spent talking about the HP medals? In that light you've subsequently made broad, general statements about how you guys are "striving to" improve but this is exactly the part where you need to be very specific.

The "nitty-gritty" of past examples are evidence and rationales for why the general dynamic of Staff have failed in the last year. 'Fail' is obviously a very strong term here but given 6 staff members have left I'm not sure you can really argue against that. The acceptance to these should be general in nature to acknowledge that there is a problem with how staff worked, but your response to the problems raised needs to be specific because you want to give your players a sense of hope that the remainder of your staff are actually committed to doing better.

Ultimately you haven't even apologised for the mistakes you've made. Isn't that in itself pretty arrogant?
Case in point: "I admit that I made a mistake in the way I dealt with the post"

What my vision of closure is
I want change that is concrete, that the community can see and measure, that the community can hold staff accountable for.

To that end, I am advocating on the following:
- Within the next 7 days, the Staff will openly ask for feedback from the community regarding the revision to the Terms and Conditions with both in-game and forum announcements, including a platform for players to respond
- By Christmas 2020, a new GM application form be finalised and published specifying the way in which work will be delegated, and what aspiring applicants will be expected to undertake
- By the end of the calendar year, the new Terms and Conditions draft be written and available for community feedback
- Written open disclosure in this thread about what are the "stronger boundaries" and "improvements" against our supposed perception of favouritism/bias from you towards Becca

I would personally also like to see Becca's independent response to the feedback towards her that have been brought forward by 15 different current and ex-Staff members. Ignoring the many calls for you to step down for a moment, how do you plan to enact changes so that similar mishaps in staff dynamic don't happen in the future? How do you plan to change the way you conduct yourself personally and professionally to regain the trust amongst your colleagues and your community?

For the community who respond to this thread
I ask that further feedback be as constructive as possible - that is, aim to provide tangible solutions to how staff can do better.
Please try to refrain from responses like "nothing is going to change" or "you're just wasting your time" because these are not productive.
The ex-staff members in the last 10 pages of this thread have all done this brilliantly. Admittedly it's more difficult without having been in staff, however if no one restarts this dialogue when is change ever going to happen?

 

Feedback is always good (much like pizza)- but like you said let's keep it productive and on track lol

Edit: Please

 

Several people discussed the idea yesterday in shoutbox, so I would like to bring it up here.

Monthly Q&A answered by Matt, that will be posted in/alongside the GM Blog.

Something like the 10 most liked questions from a q&a thread, and answer whatever you can genuinely.
For example -> How long until autoban is finished? And please for the love of god don't say SoonTM.

I truly think honesty is the first step to rebuilding the trust between the community and the staff.

 

Are the anti-matt/tim faction capable of working with matt and tim anymore?
Vitriol is pretty high against them, with dirty laundry all laid out. With insults thrown about.
Has it reached the point of no return? Currently it feels like a stalemate.
Both sides unwilling to crack.

If so, can the server be copied? The server is what it is today with the hard work of all the Gm's with matt and tim.

One copy will continue status quo, the other will approach new horizons.

The ex-Gm will not be controlled by matt/tim. Matt/Tim will no longer have to deal with the GMs
No more Becca's hysterical antics Becca will no longer be harrassed by the anti-matt/tim faction

Community will follow who they wish knowing its best for them.

I mean its just a possible route, screaming at the ramparts is not doing anything atm and just brings community morale down

 

I beg to differ, in this situation the ex-GMs are supported by a huge community.

On a server that they bled and wept for; that they are very familiar with in and out,

Matt is not giving it out randomly, its to one of the trusted figures of the community

 

Arghhh, shot down before lift off,

I feel like everyone would be much happier in that scenario..

Yeah.. matt is shouldering all that costs alone.

Its just another possible avenue to consider

 

can't say i was surprised to wake up earlier today only to find the original thread locked, so thank you @Joez for speaking what i believe was on most of our minds when we saw Matt's final response, and for outlining a more rational approach towards concluding this entire discussion

given the current and historical state of the Staff team, i'd sincerely hope they take time to focus on these aspects specifically:

- By Christmas 2020, a new GM application form be finalised and published specifying the way in which work will be delegated, and what aspiring applicants will be expected to undertake

this will bring a lot more structure into a gravely disorganised team. it'll also (hopefully) provide better direction for future Staff hires and how the team shapes up to contribute. i'd previously suggested this adjustment because i do believe the Admins are extremely out of touch with the general playerbase, and as such have no prior references for majority of the applicants, besides (likely) hearsay from the other Staff members

• besides the application process, make the hiring process more transparent as well, for e.g allow some form of community input, be it through voting or direct feedback about the applicant. if this is not possible, at least explain why certain people were hired over others

however, Matt shot it down as "a sure-fire way to create drama" and i'm admittedly puzzled. it doesn't have to go in-depth at an individual level, but can instead be a generic or simple statement like

• the successful applicants were selected based on the following qualities that we believe they bring to the table: (experience in ...), (knowledge in ...), (qualities like ...)

this might possibly help the players to understand where we're headed and how the Staff team is looking to develop subsequently, as compared to the current

• They will be assisting with character issues, anti cheating and assisting players by pointing them in the right direction or answering their threads. Feel free to ask them for assistance!

- Written open disclosure in this thread about what are the "stronger boundaries" and "improvements" against our supposed perception of favouritism/bias from you towards Becca

this is probably one of the most glaring issues that have to be addressed, and honestly should have been a long time ago. although it should preferably have been done behind closed doors, it never happened despite the numerous disputes that occurred over the past year stemming from this obvious (and repeatedly denied) bias

other thoughts
i hope Staff takes the time to reflect on themselves on an individual level as well. there's a huge disparity between the intrinsic capabilities and apparent emotional capacities of each current member. this can easily be observed through the differences between the respective responses from Tim and Shane vs. the others

yes, there's always this politically correct notion about providing guidance to others and giving them a chance to learn

but taking ownership of one's actions and abilities is the very foundation for this process to even happen. if you're too arrogant or complacent to see that you're not doing a good enough job, you'll never truly feel the need to improve in any way. this is of course, especially relevant to specific individuals as we can already see

i'd strongly suggest that if these members cannot find the time, commitment, or ability to contribute meaningfully, then they should have the self-awareness and humility to step away. there are many other ways in which you can continue to help the server, and you don't have to be on Staff for those. there must ultimately be a compelling reason for you to stay as a GM (e.g. things that you are absolutely unable to do as a normal, helpful player)

 

Even going simpler than this, I remember suggesting something like a google form to be set up for a Q&A (sort of like what the mapleroyals census is, but shorter if anyone reading is unfamiliar), with staff picking and choosing the most important questions they deem should be answered. In the fragile state of the community right now in response to the staff, I'd assume that the community would want something like read access to the questions generated from the form, so that hard hitting questions cannot just be avoided. Furthermore, going on with what Hamburg said, these questions can be the basis for a Q&A thread where people can vote for the questions they want to see and/or make suggestions while on the thread.

Opening questions purely up to a public thread may inhibit what one may be willing to ask, and thus having both anonymous suggestions and suggestions made via your forum profile could be the best way to open up a platform to help in fixing the divide caused by recent events by receiving feedback and questions from a wider community.

I strongly believe this may be the best way for the first step going forward in seeing concrete change in the server.

 

This all shouldn't have been made so public. It's not going to solve anything.

99% of people that have an opinion about this and share it have no idea wtf they're talking about nor is it their business. You think it is, but its not.

The GM staff needed some serious conflict resolution assistance is all I see. Getting your feelings out on a forum to make the community of nosy people ignite in a twitter finger furry is just a show of anger.

Everyone attacking Becca as if they knew her personally, everyone shitting on Tim&Matt, people defending themselves, attacking each other. Y'all mad at each other so just talk to each other. Why do we gotta know this crap? Just toxic imo.

Meanwhile y'all not minding your own business I'm selling Trio-Duku to afford pots for bossing #revertNLCpotprices

I was SO HAPPY to have so many staff on royals, now that this has happened it sucks. But what can I do? Hope the server continues and people stop shitting on each other. Reopening this just to satisfy yourself or others is kinda selfish.

Everyone just take a break from the forums, let them figure their shit out. I hope Becca is OK. I hope the Roany/ioopy/sharon thing is resolved. I hope Josh and other prior GMs settle things out amongst themselves.

A wise soul once said "relax, its a 2D Korean children's game"

 

in all honesty, what do you think we’d been trying to do in the past year whilst we were still in Staff? we’ve even shown proof that we tried hashing this out amongst ourselves but the fact remains that it hasn’t worked

 

As someone who has been a player, staff member and outsider looking in, I figured I could also give my input.
Please note that I only want to add onto some suggestions for improvement. I don't want to comment on recent drama and things I have no idea about.

This should not be a witchhunt, mistakes were made, angry messages were written,... . Not only from the (ex-)Staff but also the players in this community.
It's about improvement and how to handle it in the following weeks/months.
If this is treated as a witchhunt no good changes will come of this and everyone will just have wasted time with these threads and feedback.


I'd like to start by saying I am only recently active again on the forums and in the game.
So I apologize in advance if I say something that has already been mentioned, changed or implemented.

Reviewing T&C
Although the final decision falls 100% to the staff. I'd suggest at least showing the new draft to the community before updating. Give people a chance to add/remark before finalizing and try to explain why and what effect you want this to have.
Maybe that way, the loopholes can already be taken out before the new T&C is implemented and more inconsistencies happen.

Updated GM Applications
I agree for more transparency and having the questions be more specified. Maybe there should also be some (public) test(s) involved before giving anyone the JR GM position? (I'm not sure how the process currently works)
e.g. "Handle a (fake or real) ban appeal", ...

Q&A
THIS. THIS. THIS. At least have one every couple months, with questions send in via Forum / MR Discord / Ingame (official channels, viewable for everyone). The community will appreciate this.
I would suggest including all the staff members in these (rotating staff members during each Q&A). So the community hears from more than 1 or 2 loud voices.
This can be done entirely on the forum, on discord, as a live stream or in-game... (Or whatever the GMs in that Q&A are comfortable with)

Yes, this could just be done via forum post/google doc sheet. But I think actual (live) interaction would be better. (and feel more transparent)


ETA/SoonTM
I know being a MR staff member/dev/admin is not your full-time job. I don't think we should pressure anyone into losing sleep over deadlines for the game.
BUT you should be transparent and realistic in your deadlines. And they should be shared with the community.

Those Q&As could be the perfect platform to expand on future content/updates and your view on the timing of those updates.
I'm not saying that there should be riots if the deadline won't be reached. But at least the community will know where you are at and why these delays are happening.


Suggestions
if community suggestions are made, why not have one of the Staff members compile them into a list. Once a month you review them (staff) and you select e.g. 5 of the best suggestions.(Which are possible and fit the game)
Next, you can let the community vote on which (or several) will be implemented.

This way the player base will feel like they have more of a say in the game in general. It will also give you a better idea of the wants and needs of players.
It's a win-win.

TRANSPARENCY, TRANSPARENCY, TRANSPARENCY
Although I don't agree with the sharing of private Staff conversations (leaking), you should disclose any decisions that affect the players/game as a whole.


Just one final note and my inspiration for this post.
Transparency is key. A great example is Old School Runescape.
For those who don't know, (Old School) Runescape is like Maplestory an MMO. It got changed heavily over the years. (RS3/EOC is comparable to BIG BANG in MS)
So back in 2013, the 2007 version of the game was reintroduced by Jagex, the official owner of the game.

They started it with a small dedicated team, but with huge success. Now in 2020, this "rebooted 2007" version is a very big part of their income. (This is exclusive of subscriptions, merch and bonds)
RS3, the continued version of the original, which has tons of MTX added to it etc, is now starting to lose comparing to OSRS.

The OSRS team is smart. They do weekly Q&A's to keep the community up to date. Suggestions from those same Q&A's are sometimes implemented to the game.
Everything added or changed in the game is suggested in blog posts. Every (part of the) update is voted on by the players and they won't be implemented if they do not reach 70%.

The OSRS player base feels heavily involved in the game. Although the size and scale of player base is not comparable to MR, try to see how they made this into a success story that is still growing year after year.


Edited cause I am stupid and deleted half the post trying to fix a typo.
edit2: formatting stuff

 

I didn't imply y'all didn't try. Just disagree with the outcome and current state. I think it could of been better, but fuck it.

It iz wut it iz.

 

Bring all these up and with a few staffs quitting aren't going to change a thing. We should've known all these stuffs been going on with Tim all these years. How he abuse his power and favor his guild buddies LMFAO. Royals is not a small community anymore, losing a few of you is not going to change a thing. Literally the good one are gone, whoever left on the staff teams are just meh, not to be offensive. GMs are so easily replace and Idk why people think they can make a change as GM LOL... But I am glad the Josh, Kai and June bought it up, we need staffs like them to voice up instead those being coward afraid losing their GM position.

 

You're speaking as If they never went private about this at all and didn't handle it professionally or chose all other options. As far as I can see June cared so much that she decided to choose a poor but brave choice so everyone could notice and talk it out. It worked but, of course, had a cost. Good or bad it depends on how you look at it. It would be nicer if you can suggest a better way to discuss this because while there are people who just want the drama and making things worse, some actually really want a better change for this server.

If we let Staff figure their shit out on their own, I'm honestly (no offense) expecting they'll just wait for the drama to die out and nothing will change for the good again. It's nice that some Staff are replying and we are communicating (until Matt closed the thread), but since we reopened it, hopefully, something good will come out of it rather than nothing... To the fellow Staff who feels now uncomfortable because we are stubbornly trying to fight for our opinions to actually help the server- Please step away from your comfort zone and let's discuss this further. Please try to see the good side more than the bad side.

For me, a wise soul once said "It's better to know what's really going on and face it rather than not knowing anything so you can continue to be in bliss." But that really depends on the person anyway. :> I think you should take your own suggestion and take a break from forums as well as anyone who doesn't like what's happening.

 

Encouraging to see changes at an organisational level.

Hoping to see this lead to fruitful outcomes
- would recommend delegating to specific staff members to sift through prospective feedback threads and escalate items worthy of discussion
- a deadline for categorisation should ideally be set - 2 weeks should be quite reasonable for an active staff roster
- while it's not feasible nor a good use of time for staff to go through the 152 pages of past feedback threads in this subforum, it would be nice to get some indication from staff how they intend to address the hundreds of feedback posts that no one's read/remembered

I have to say - whilst we like to see action, it's better at this stage that Staff talk to us about these actions first instead of the same old recycled mix of "we're striving to change things", "we're always looking for feedback" then accuse the community for dismantling staff trust when nothing happens

 

matt locking the other thread without good reason didnt bode well in my hopes of the problems being ever fixed.
I guess now i can only hope this server don't die a slow death one way or the other.

 

Discouraging that the next publicly visible change is that the thread owner has been quietly changed from June to Matt, without any acknowledgement of her contribution.

Moreover, minimising her input during her time as staff member was apparently of higher priority than undoing the "48 hour harassment reporting rule" which still stands in both threads:
https://royals.ms/forum/threads/capturing-evidence-for-reports.177814/
https://royals.ms/forum/threads/upd...nd-hiring-new-intern-gms.180201/#post-1052483

If staff are actually willing to listen to the words of our sociology and legal experts in the community can I implore that
- whatever veto power that was used to implement this immediate change be undone within the same haste because clearly change can occur quickly
- give June the acknowledgement she deserves. Countless other ex-staff members have retained their ownership of their thread(s), why should this one be any different?